User talk:Serendipodous/archive 19

Units

Hello... sorry I haven't chatted in a while. A question - bit of a brew at [{Talk:Sun]] regarding the removal of three stray non-SI conversions. Do you care to weigh in, and do you recall off-hand where any of the multiple discussions about the convention of SI-only were? Cheers. --Ckatz^chat _spy 22:20, 25 October 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Extended reverts to Discworld witches

I reverted a host of changes you made to the Discworld Witches page. I'm sure it seemed like Original Research to you, and, in truth, I was wavering on whether or not it was OR myself, but I decided it wasn't, and here's why:

In A Hat Full of Sky, towards the beginning, when Tiffany is discussing heading to the mountains for her training, she mentions her prowess with cheese and how every witch finds it convenient to have a known non-supernatural talent. The exact quote: "You weren't allowed to charge money for the witching, so all witches did some other job as well". So Glenda has that quality. Throughout all of the Witch books and the Tiffany books, it is often talked about that the great majority of witchcraft is helping those who can't help themselves, being on the borders, etc, etc. So Glenda has that quality. Granny Aching's inclusion as a witch, by both the wikipedia editors and Pratchett himself(through Granny Weatherwax) and, in-universe, Granny Weatherwax and Nanny Ogg, shows that you don't have to self-identify as a witch to be a witch. So Glenda has that quality. In the Tiffany books, second thoughts and first sight are described as witchly qualities. In Unseen Academicals, Glenda often thinks about how she's thinking, particularly with the whole crab bucket theme(Second thoughts), and clearly sees only what is there/can see through illusion, as shown most clearly by her reaction to the fashion industry(First sight). So Glenda has that quality. Finally, both Nanny Ogg and Granny Weatherwax(and possibly others, I'm too lazy to look), that are on the Discworld Witches page have their own articles as well, so that's not a valid argument for excluding Glenda, especially since her article doesn't mention that she's a non-self-identified witch.

Tiffany remarks, in I Shall Wear Midnight, how stressing it is that her steading includes the entire chalk. Letitia is the very definition of a maiden. Amber's gift of understanding qualifies her as the mother archetype. That only leaves one witch and one role, and given the many parallels drawn between Granny and Tiffany throughout the Tiffany books, it's not OR to describe her as the same role in the coven as Granny has in the Lancre coven. Lastly,jJust because the group of chalk witches is not officially a coven(meaning by Pratchett's directly designating them one) doesn't mean they're not a coven in fact(meaning coven as in a group of connected, in this case geographically connected, witches).

Please don't change my additions again, they all are based on what Pratchett himself has written about witches and characters. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 69.250.170.106 (talk) 08:57, 1 November 2010 (UTC)[reply]

I understand that's how wikipedia works. i'm not inferring anything, it's all laid out there in Pratchett's texts is what I just tried to get you to understand.

Pratchett doesn't need to say she's a witch. Pratchett can also define what a Discworld witch is and then define a character as having those same qualities without it being an inference to equate the two, because Pratchett is the one who's defining both of them the same way. Using your standards: Because Pratchett, for example, doesn't explicitly define the creature that the Lancre Witches encounter in Witches Abroad as Gollum, that that's not who it's intended to be, and that it isn't a reference to Gollum.== —Preceding unsigned comment added by 69.250.170.106 (talk) 09:15, 1 November 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Apologies. I spoke badly above. What I should have said is that Pratchett doesn't need to *directly* say she's a witch. The inferences aren't mine, they're his. By him establishing what a witch is and then establishing who Glenda Sugarbean is/what she does, and making her/those things be the same as what witches are/what they do, he's making the inference.

Additionally, here's all of the things that need to be deleted from just the opening of the Discworld Witches page alone if we stuck to the standards you're trying to stick to me:

-Reference to Witches in British Folklore. -Reference to the Triple Goddess -Witchcraft and a lever -Headology and psychology -witch being able to do more than a technically equally powerful wizard -zen like ability -not making a big deal about it -refusing to take wizards seriously -Pretty much every sentence that has "generally" in it.

And I could go through the whole article, and many others, some of which you yourself have had a prominent hand in and come up with just as large a list. But I don't, because it would neuter the articles, make wikipedia not be the place for info that it is, and turn away potentially valuable wikipedia editors.

Lastly, I couldn't find the "rule" of no inferences that you keep on citing under wikipedia policies and standards. Would you mind telling me where exactly that rule is stated? --69.250.170.106 (talk) 22:06, 1 November 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Main page apperance

Hello! This is a note to let the main editors of this article know that it will be appearing as the main page featured article on November 14, 2010. You can view the TFA blurb at Wikipedia:Today's featured article/November 14, 2010. If you think that it is necessary to change the main date, you can request it with the featured article director, Raul654 (talk · contribs). If this article needs any attention or maintenance, it would be preferable if that could be done before its appearance on the Main Page so Wikipedia doesn't look bad. :D Thanks! Tbhotch^Talk ^C. 06:26, 9 November 2010 (UTC)[reply]

The orbit of dwarf planet candidate 90377 Sedna compared to the inner solar system

90377 Sedna is a trans-Neptunian object currently about three times as far from the Sun as Neptune. For the majority of its orbit it is the most distant known object in the Solar System other than long-period comets. Roughly two-thirds the size of Pluto, Sedna is hypothetically large enough to be rounded by its own gravity, and thus would qualify as a dwarf planet under current definitions. However, its distance makes determining its shape difficult. Spectroscopy has revealed that Sedna's surface composition is similar to that of some other trans-Neptunian objects, being largely a mixture of water, methane, and nitrogen ices with tholins. Its surface is one of the reddest in the Solar System. Its exceptionally long and elongated orbit, taking approximately 12,000 years to complete, and distant point of closest approach to the Sun have led to much speculation as to its origin. Astronomer Mike Brown, who co-discovered Sedna in 2003, believes it to be the most scientifically important trans-Neptunian object found to date, as understanding its peculiar orbit is likely to yield valuable information about the origin and early evolution of the Solar System. (more...)

FAR

Hi Serendipodous! Hope everything's well. I just noticed that Herbig–Haro object was at FAR. That's a shame, and I didn't know if you were interested in saving it or not. Naturally, I would try, but I'm not capable of taking on a complicated article like that. :/

FLRC

I have nominated Timeline of discovery of Solar System planets and their moons for featured list removal here. Please join the discussion on whether this article meets the featured list criteria. Articles are typically reviewed for two weeks; editors may declare to "Keep" or "Delist" the article's featured status. The instructions for the review process are here. The Rambling Man (talk) 18:33, 18 November 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Ariel

I think we are reading different sources. If you interested there a few articles here: http://www.filefactory.com/file/b47ddhd/n/Ariel.zip Ruslik_Zero 20:04, 29 November 2010 (UTC)[reply]

UK Community Notice - IRC meeting

Dear Wikipedian,

This is the first of what will hopefully be a regular notice to help bring together the UK community so that you can be involved in some amazing things. To kick things off, there will be a UK community IRC meeting at 1800 UTC, December 7, 2010 to discuss the future growth and developement of Wikimedia UK. Without huge community support and involvement, the chapter cannot be successful and to get the most out of it, get involved.

For information on the community IRC meeting please go here

More to come about:

Wikipedia 10th Anniversary Events
1st Annual UK Wiki-conference
Trustee interest meeting - an event for those community members with even just a fleeting interest in becoming trustees of Wikimedia UK.

Many Thanks

Joseph Seddon

User:Seddon

Delivered by WMUKBot (talk) on 05:37, 5 December 2010 (UTC)[reply]

UK IRC community meeting

Just a quick reminder about the IRC meeting at 1800 UTC tonight to bring together the Wikimedia community in the UK to help the growth and success of the UK chapter and community activities. For information see wmuk:Community_IRC_meetings

Many Thanks

Joseph Seddon

User:Seddon

Delivered by WMUKBot (talk) on 17:28, 7 December 2010 (UTC) [reply]

WikiProject Jupiter proposal

Hello! Would you be interested in forming WikiProject Jupiter? If so, please show your support by clicking on the link above!--Novus Orator 06:52, 14 December 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Discworld Changes

Good idea re: ridding "Discworld Geography" of biogs......but how would you/we accomplish it? Would you favor a similar page to "Ankh-Morporkians by Institution" called "Discworld Characters by Geography"? But, more importantly(and first to be dealt with):

As far as character overload goes: I'm of two minds on that...on one side(the side I was going with), you have the idea that an encyclopedic level of coverage of Discworld would include blurbs on the characters that are more than just throwaway lines or gags, as well as the fact that if there's a Discworld Geography article and a Discworld physics(titled Discworld (world)) article, there should probably be articles(or blurbs) on Discworld characters.....on the other side is Wikipedia's notability policy.....it's debatable, at best, whether blurbs describing Discworld characters are notable enough to be included in Wikipedia's coverage of Discworld. What I think needs to happen is that those who are the primary contributors to Wikipedia's Discworld coverage should try to reach a consensus on which side coverage is going to fall on and then change things to reflect that side(in other words, we need to shit or get off the pot: either a comprehensive amount of blurbs on minor characters or no description of minor characters at all). Though I, personally, favor inclusion, I'll go whichever way the consensus goes.

If the Discworld Characters page is reintroduced, it will (1.) suffer from the same lack of organization that it had previously seen, (2.) if ever achieving comprehensiveness, would be WAY too long.

I'd be willing to be a part of the Discworld crew. Only problem with that is that you keep reverting the changes I've made without any discussion and seem to think that you're the Administrator of Wikipedia's Discworld coverage. On that note:

You made a series of changes earlier today to the Discworld (world) article. The next chance I get, I'm reverting your changes, for the following reasons: (1.) All of the changes I made were because the article was phrased in such a way that it was easy to describe it as being in an "in-universe" style, (2.) my changes were modeled after the way that other Featured Articles on fictional series are structured, and (3.) the section describing Great A'tuin doesn't deal just with it, it deals with Chelys Galactica in general; as such, it's misleading to title that section after just one part of what the section describes. I've gotta go right now, duty calls, but I'm not ignoring your response, I'll answer it when I have more time, and I won't revert until we either reach a consensus or it becomes clear that consensus can't be reached through no fault of my own.Mobtown Mongrel (talk) 20:35, 16 December 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Chelys Galactic vs. Great A'tuin. The last little paragraph of that section concerns all chelys galactica, not just Great A'tuin, and is from the Science of Discworld books(presumably...I haven't read them, but I didn't add that bit either). As far as keeping it in-universe requiring a blanking of the page and starting from scratch, you're describing what would need to be done if "Discworld (novels)" was written from an in-universe perspective, but it's not, and I'm not even sure how it could be. "Discworld (world)", though, as long as we're careful to note that what we're talking about it is fictional should make it less possible for someone to tag it as in-universe.....but I don't really care about this change enough to argue the point--it is redundant to use Fictional 50 times and if you don't care if the article is tagged, I don't particularly either so long as that tag doesn't lead to deletion.....the Chelys Galactica part, though, detracts from the accuracy of the article plus, I'm reasonably certain there's other good stuff from the Science of Discworld subseries that could be included in that section that has to do with Chelys Galactica in general rather than just Great A'tuin.--Mobtown Mongrel (talk) 00:50, 17 December 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Didn't revert the changes you made to Discworld (world) article but did make some tweaks to what you did that, hopefully, will satisfy both of us. I added ", and thusly Great A'tuin" to the section I noted above so the section now is only about Great A'tuin(with the added bonus that the article's now about Discworld (world) instead of Discworld (universe)). One near-revert that I did do was to readd "Exogeology" as a section category so that all of the top-tier section titles match each other.

On a somewhat non-wikipedia-related topic, have you read the Science of Discworld subseries? Is there more information in them that could enrich the Discworld (world) article?--Mobtown Mongrel (talk) 08:24, 18 December 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Just noticed something else. When you changed Chelys Galactica to Great A'tuin and the removal of the word "Fictional", you didn't fix the redirects and, presumably, links that accompanied those changes.--Mobtown Mongrel (talk) 08:29, 18 December 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Outer Planets

I've been reading the articles on the outer planets, and the talk pages as well. I wanted to let you know I appreciate what you've done in working with these articles, especially some of the stuff you've had to put up with in Uranus and Pluto. Wabbott9 (talk) 02:09, 17 December 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Reptilians

Probably better to merge what is now on Reptilian humanoid to Reptilian and have list of reptilian humanoids moved to list of reptilians. Marcus Qwertyus 09:56, 4 January 2011 (UTC)[reply]

I have cited the synonymity of the terms Reptilian, Reptilian humanoid and Reptoid. Marcus Qwertyus 10:38, 4 January 2011 (UTC)[reply]

January 2011

Please stop your disruptive editing. If you continue to blank out or remove portions of page content, templates or other materials from Wikipedia, as you did at Reptilians, you may be blocked from editing. Marcus Qwertyus 11:19, 4 January 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Reptilian humanoid listed at Redirects for discussion

An editor has asked for a discussion to address the redirect Reptilian humanoid. Since you had some involvement with the Reptilian humanoid redirect, you might want to participate in the redirect discussion (if you have not already done so). Marcus Qwertyus 18:26, 6 January 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Photon belt

You created it at the wrong name, and the template in the article didn't link it properly. I have moved it to the correct name, please make sure that the page is in your watchlist. --Enric Naval (talk) 14:14, 11 January 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Oh, dammit, sorry :-( --Enric Naval (talk) 14:22, 11 January 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Meh, I think that it's ok at that name, both names have their own set of problems. I manually listed the old afd. --Enric Naval (talk) 14:30, 11 January 2011 (UTC)[reply]

E-mail

I would like to send you my e-mail message again, but there's no "button" to click on to do so -- as though you have not set up an e-mail address. If I look at another user who has done so, I see a button under the "Logs" button in the left-hand margin of his user page or his talk page, labeled "E-mail this user". Eric Kvaalen (talk) 09:46, 12 January 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Atmosphere of Uranus

I finished with this article. May I ask you to copy-edit it? Ruslik_Zero 18:11, 22 January 2011 (UTC)[reply]

You can download papers here:

http://www.filefactory.com/file/b52918f/n/Miranda.zip

Ruslik_Zero 11:15, 26 January 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Have you received them? Ruslik_Zero 19:47, 27 January 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Wikipedia Ambassador Program is looking for new Online Ambassadors

Hi! Since you've been identified as an Awesome Wikipedian, I wanted to let you know about the Wikipedia Ambassador Program, and specifically the role of Online Ambassador. We're looking for friendly Wikipedians who are good at reviewing articles and giving feedback to serve as mentors for students who are assigned to write for Wikipedia in their classes.

If that sounds like you and you're interested, I encourage you to take a look at the Online Ambassador guidelines; the "mentorship process" describes roughly what will be expected of mentors during the current term, which started in January and goes through early May. If that's something you want to do, please apply!

You can find instructions for applying at WP:ONLINE. The main things we're looking for in Online Ambassadors are friendliness, regular activity (since mentorship is a commitment that spans several months), and the ability to give detailed, substantive feedback on articles (both short new articles, and longer, more mature ones).

I hope to hear from you soon.--Sage Ross - Online Facilitator, Wikimedia Foundation (talk) 01:26, 1 February 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Wikipedia Mentor

Hi Serendipodous! I was hoping you would be willing to be my mentor for our wikipedia assignment. Our article is on nonpoint source pollution. Thanks! TrueBlueWolverine (talk) 01:32, 9 February 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Wikipedia Ambassador Program Newsletter: 13 February 2011

The newsletter of the Wikipedia Ambassador Program – Volume 1, 28 January 2011

This is the second issue of the Wikipedia Ambassador Program Newsletter, with details about what's going on right now and where help is needed.

Userboxes and profiles - Add an ambassador userbox to your page, and make sure you've added your mentor profile!
Be a coordinating ambassador - Pick and class and make sure no students fall through the cracks.
New screencasts - Short videos on watchlists and a number of other topics may be useful to students.
Updates from Campus Ambassadors - Ambassadors are starting to report on classroom experiences, both on-wiki and on the Google Group.
Other news - There's a new on-wiki application for being an Online Ambassador, and Editing Friday #2 is today!
Things you can do - This is just a sample; if you're eager for something to do, there's plenty more.

Delivered by EdwardsBot (talk) 18:26, 11 February 2011 (UTC) [reply]

TrueBlueWolverine

It looks like many of the students in that class have not edited since Feb 8 or 9. I guess you will have to wait until the class is told to edit again. These students aren't addicted to WP, yet. :) -- Donald Albury 14:32, 18 February 2011 (UTC)[reply]

DYK for Tyche (planet)

On 21 February 2011, Did you know? was updated with a fact from the article Tyche (planet), which you created or substantially expanded. The fact was ... that in 1999, a giant planet was hypothesized to exist in the outer Oort cloud of the solar system, but most astronomers are skeptical of its existence? You are welcome to check how many hits the article got while on the front page (here's how, quick check) and add it to DYKSTATS if it got over 5,000. If you know of another interesting fact from a recently created article, then please suggest it on the Did you know? talk page.

Materialscientist (talk) 06:03, 21 February 2011 (UTC)[reply]